Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

But you know this all, since you've had other games in the past! So let's skip the preamble and get into the meat.

First, this was just a small thing I noticed but there was a point where the word "assigned" was spelled as "asigned." Want to get this out of the way.

Now onto bigger things. I felt like this game was absolutely dominated by RNG in the dice rolls. During my playthrough, I did the tutorial and the first two stages of the campaign... however, it was primarily the last stage I did that ate the majority of my play time with over 38 minutes on it for one simple reason: the computer, for most of the match, maintained a better rate of high rolls compared to my own. I wish I had been tracking all of the rolls as I'm pretty confident that the computer was well into the double digits when it came to rolls 11 and up while I had made 10 of these total. I even got cursed with the lowest roll possible of 3, something the computer avoided (we both rolled double ones twice, with me getting 3 and 4 total while the computer got 4 and 8 total).

Because of this, I spent so long trying to maintain some sort of frontline only for it to be destroyed in a single turn as the computer would roll 11 or 12 and would wipe out 3 or 4 units at once and just destroy all the progress I made. I'd never be able to get units moved up from the rear to support, because if I didn't use my more forward troops to defend then there would be nobody for the rear units to bring support to. It's worth noting that the computer only got a third base once. After that I was the only one who got the third location. This was within 5 minutes of the stage beginning. Basically, I spent 30 minutes trying to get the rolls I needed to have a front line that could survive more than one turn. Now I get it, the game is called Attrition. It's supposed to be a war of attrition. However, I've never been a fan of games where RNG dictates whether you can make progress or not. This is probably the number one complaint I've made in this event.

The question is how do you fix this? In truth, I don't really know the best solution here. At first I thought about suggesting you get a third dice if you control three bases, but then there's the issue of if the starting rolls favour the computer and allow them to get the third base first. Now they're getting three rolls and the player is going to be screwed due to just how much more efficient the computer is with its moves. So this idea wouldn't work. Other ideas I had also wouldn't work because you're clearly designing the game where the player and the computer have an equal playing field, so any ideas I suggest to give the player would also need to be given to the compute (this is also because of the multiplayer function of the game). So honestly, how you resolve this is something I think only you'll be able to come up with.

There are two other things I also want to pick at. The first is how the red bases work. So I get that it allows the person to fire at someone from two squares away instead of one, but what bothers me is that it can't be used diagonally. I just generally think this should be allowed, as at least then if a red base is surrounded on all cardinals then the unit inside isn't completely useless and guaranteed to die. Second is in regards to how you can't attack a red base tile from a grey base tile. I won't lie, this doesn't make sense from a gameplay standpoint. I believe the idea is that the red base is a tall building and the grey base is a small building... but then units on the ground can somehow attack the tall building? I feel like someone climbing to the top of a small building would have an EASIER time attacking a unit on a tall building compared to someone at ground level.

In the back of my mind I feel like there was something else but I can't remember, so I guess this is where my feedback ends. Keep up the great work, LMG!

Hello! This is Ikiru from oldflowergames with some comments on your game. Overall it was a neat experience - I see below that this is your first game, and I agree with Luna that it's impressive for a first project! I really only ran into a few bugs, which is a true accomplishment. That said, I had a few notes, which are broken into categories here:

Gameplay:

    • I like the idea of a shared movement pool across all units – it promotes a lot of turn-by-turn strategic thinking. But making the amount of movement per turn random feels arbitrary and frustrating to me. Rolling a 2 then watching an enemy roll a 12 and steamroll past was no fun. If it were somehow tied into an in-game mechanic or resource it could work, but just having dice appear is not convincing, imo.

    • It feels kinda silly that attacks are all melee, since the characters are clearly holding guns... I would get it if the maps looked like they were representing a larger space, but the size feels inconsistent (HQ vs. the Rocks tile, for example).

    • Only having one unit type also feels very limiting. I started the third demo battle and saw that there weren’t any new units on the map so I went ahead and stopped playing. I don’t know if you have more planned for the future, but if they’re in the game, definitely introduce them sooner!

    • I had a huge “inevitable victory” problem while playing. It was most apparent on the second map, where I rolled huge movement and secured two bases before the enemy. At that point I had already won – it was just a matter of waiting for the victory, with no tension. I think there needs to be some kind of comeback mechanic or it just becomes an exercise in tedium.

    • It’s a weird limitation that you can’t deploy troops at the Outposts unless your HQ slots are filled up. On the second map I ended up with tons of units just hanging out at the HQ and Outposts purely for the purpose of letting me deploy more at the most forward Outpost... which only left me with a few units to work with on the front lines.

    • A small thing, but repeating the tutorial steps in the demo missions is not ideal. I know you have to account for players potentially skipping the tutorial, but it’s tedious to see these things repeated once you start the demo missions. Consider tracking the tutorials that the player has already seen to prevent the repetition.

Bugs:

    • Changing the resolution does not actually change anything in Fullscreen or Borderless Fullscreen mode.

    • Typo: “Luckily, if the enemy is inside an adyacent ‘SMALL BUILDING’”

    • In the second Demo mission, I was unable to attack from the Tall Buildings at any range, maybe because they hadn’t been explained yet in the mission? But the enemies were able to use them to their advantage, and they were never explained here.

Polish:

    • Typewriter text does a weird wraparound thing, where words start on one line then jump down to the next. Not a big deal, but does not feel polished. (I got around this in my game (using Unity + TextMeshPro) by populating the full text but incrementing “maxVisibleChars” to make it appear over time instead. Not sure what engine you’re using, but hopefully that can help!)

Music (I’m being more specific here since I saw that the developer also made the music!):

    • Overall, the music is fun but too same-y. I’m glad that you’re not just looping the same song over and over, but all the songs use the same instruments and are maybe even in the same key? Some variety across tracks would be great to hear. An example of a game that does a really great job of this is Loop Hero – the playlist of songs is cohesive, but varied.

    • The main menu music doesn’t make a great impression - The big 80’s drums are cool but the repetitive synths that come in are pretty grating. The B section is really neat, though! Since people aren’t going to spend much time on this screen, I recommend getting to the good stuff more quickly.

    • Victory song is way too quiet compared to the rest.

Overall, I enjoyed the stripped down tactics of the game, and think the presentation has potential. However I felt there were some pretty fundamental flaws in the gameplay that would keep me from playing past the first couple missions. With some more variety and less RNG in the gameplay this could be a neat game, though!

Hey! I tried your game on stream. 

Honestly, I think your game is solid. I frankly cannot give much critiques beyond better art if you want more attention to it. I love the gameplay, I love the feel of it. Its solid. Frankly, there's more praise than critiques. I hope if you ever make a next game, get some nice art for it, and REALLY hammer it in cuz I see the potential, but it definitely needs more to take it to the next level IF that is what you want.

LINK: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2557965853